This set of ideas is from Joseph Mattera: Mattera thinks the very items many measure success by today are the same items Jesus opposed in Matthew 23. “In this passage Jesus speaks against people loving titles, celebrity status, and desiring prominent places in public events.” Here are his five myths: MYTH #1: The Size of the Church Shows Success. MYTH #2: The Amount of the Budget Shows Success. MYTH #3: The Celebrity Status of the Leader Shows Success. MYTH #4:... Read more
The latest installment of the BioLogos series Southern Baptist Voices, published earlier this month, explored the troubling issue of the role death plays in evolution. John D. Laing, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary’s Havard School for Theological Studies, raised the issue in his essay Evolution and Death. The point I wish to make here is that the theistic evolutionist simply cannot escape the fact that the necessary corollary to survival of the fittest... Read more
If you were a 1st Century Jew or Roman or Greek perhaps the most incomprehensible claim of the Christians was the belief that God’s kingdom, the Eschaton, was already at work in the here and now. That claim is on the horizontal plane of time: the future is now. At times a vertical move was made: the heavenly is now earthly, and we see this in Ephesians/Colossians and in Hebrews. But the two can be reasonably synthesized into “tasting the... Read more
From Gene Seymour: What were you doing when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon? But Armstrong, a native of Wapakoneta, Ohio, so steeped in flying that his idea of winding down was piloting gliders in his spare time, wanted exactly none of those options. Having his choice of any possible future after leaving NASA in 1971, he chose to go back to his home state and teach aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati. It was an unusual, but, by... Read more
From The Atlantic: Nearly five years after the market came crashing down, America’s housing market is beginning to show signs of recovery. Sales of previously-occupied homes have been tracking upward, as have prices. And according to data released today by the by real-estate website Zillow, the share of homeowners who are “underwater” is also starting to slowly improve. The Zillow data tracks the percent of homeowners with negative equity — that is, those who owe more than their homes are worth — and... Read more
From Religion and Ethics: Many people are Christians because of the work of C.S. Lewis. With wit and wisdom, Lewis imaginatively exploded the hollow pretensions of the secular. Moreover, he helped many see, for the first time, the world in the light of fact that “it had really happened once.” It is, therefore, not easy to criticize Lewis when he has such a devoted following. Yet I must write critically of Lewis because here I want to examine his views... Read more
Here’s what my Bible records Peter explaining on the Day of Pentecost: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy. The NIV11 does show the cognate terms clearly because “servants” refers to male and female servants of God — same term,... Read more
Many today are taken with the “spiritual but not religious” category (SBNR). I’m not. Diana Butler Bass, in her new book, Christianity after Religion, is. Spirituality is good; religion is bad. The language is the rhetoric of combat or partisanship. It is also the language of the non-defined. What do you think “SBNR” means? What message is expressed? Yet, many today do use these terms for themselves the way Jesus Freaks in the 60s wore tie-dyed T-shirts and sandals and were... Read more
What do you think? Are you in favor of more taxes to help with Social Security? What’s the best way forward? What is your age? From AP: WASHINGTON (AP) – Most Americans say go ahead and raise taxes if it will save Social Security benefits for future generations. And raise the retirement age, if you have to. Both options are preferable to cutting monthly benefits, even for people who are years away from applying for them. Those are the findings... Read more
Why do you think women are more generous? From USA Today: Boomer and older women give 89% more of their total income to charity than their male counterparts when education, income, race, number of children and other factors affecting giving are equal, according to the Women Give 2012 report from the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Women with more financial resources are even more generous than men with similar resources. These women in the... Read more
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